Friday, August 10, 2012

Christopher Bradley

AN ICY wind blew through the town of Stevenson, Washington, on
Saturday evening, January 26, 1991. It was normal, dead-of-winter
weather for the small town and the several other hamlets that lie,
miles apart, along the Columbia River Gorge on the Washington side of
the nation’s third largest river. The Columbia is a major shipping
waterway that also serves as the border between Washington and Oregon.
It was a brightly moonlit night, and the east wind kept the area in a
deep freeze. The temperature, as usual at that time of the year, was
expected to drop well below freezing by nightfall. Most people stayed
indoors. Unfortunately, the winter chill didn’t keep lovely 15-year-old
Amy Christine Dexter at home that Saturday night.
An attractive girl standing 5 feet 6 inches tall and weighing 105
pounds, Amy had no need to spend much time in front of the mirror before
going out. She took a quick shower, blow-dried her flowing blonde
hair, and put on only a light base of makeup and eye shadow that
complemented her pretty hazel eyes. Then she pulled on a light-colored
short-sleeve top and a pair of dark-colored stretch pants, stepped into
a pair of flat-heeled slippers, grabbed a faded Levis jacket and
walked out of the house for what was to be the last time of her young
life.
Getting ready for her date had taken Amy only a few minutes, and
nobody in the house paid any mind to what she was wearing. Not until
later, when her family determined what she had worn that evening, would
anyone realize that her attire wasn’t appropriate for the freezing
night air.
It would also be reasoned later that Amy had never planned on
spending much time outdoors that evening, nor had she thought, even for
an instant, that she might never return home. With her unusual,
amiable, perpetual smile on her clear-skinned face, Amy assured a
family member that she wouldn’t be gone long. That relative had no
reason to believe otherwise.
Early the next morning, however, Amy’s family quickly noticed her
absence. They reasoned, correctly, that she hadn’t returned home and
gone directly to bed as she normally did following a date. When they
checked her room, they discovered that she wasn’t there — her bed hadn’t
been slept in, nor were there any notes from her. Likewise, they
noticed that Amy had taken no other clothes with her except for the
garments she’d been wearing.
By noon, when there was still no word from her, Amy’s family, gravely
concerned about her well-being, contacted the Skamania County
Sheriff’s Department and reported her missing.
A deputy arrived at Amy’s home and the family members told him what
little they knew about her failure to return home. They had checked her
room, they said, and contacted several of her friends and
acquaintances. Nobody had seen her. One relative insisted that it was
out of character for Amy to be gone for a long time without informing
the other family members.
“Amy is not like that at all,” said the relative. “I know if she’s
anywhere, she’s scared to death right now.” The relative described her
as a skinny girl who ate constantly, and said that Amy was looking
forward to turning 16 on February 25th so that she could get her
driver’s license. The family provided the deputy with a physical
description of the Stevenson High School sophomore, a recent school
photo, and a list of the clothing she was believed to have been wearing
when she left the house.
Because it was a Sunday, Sheriff Ray Blaisdell had to be reached at
home and informed about the missing girl. It was apparent to him from
the outset that Amy did not fit the profile of a runaway. Since he
believed that foul play could have been involved in her disappearance,
Blaisdell promptly organized a search-and-rescue effort to look for the
missing teen in the remote, rugged terrain around Stevenson.
Nancy Sourek, Skamania County’s director of emergency services, began
summoning teams from as far away as Yakima County to initiate as
intensive a search of the area as possible. As an added effort, the U.S.
Air Force Reserve’s 939th Aerospace Rescue and Recovery Squadron
responded, making low-level flights over an area of approximately 15
square miles, while ground searchers looked for the girl below. Despite
these widespread efforts, no sign of the girl turned up.

“We’ve made no progress,” said Deputy Bob Warrick, assigned to
manage the search team’s command post. He explained to the media that
searchers had turned the area upside down, but their efforts had been
hampered by the rough terrain of “canyons, lots of steep area, lots of
cliffs.”
By nightfall, everyone feared the worst for Amy Dexter.
The search resumed early the next day, joined by mounted officers
from the Multnomah County Sheriff’s Department in Portland, Oregon. The
combined search efforts of all agencies involved covered both forest
areas and clear-cut regions, without success. The inconsistency of the
weather also hindered the searchers’ efforts to find footprints. The
frozen ground was much too hard to hold traceable footprints and, during
warmer hours, the occasional rain showers had only created mud. If any
tracks had been left in the mud, the impressions were soon washed away
by the rain before refreezing again at night. “It warmed up a little
last night,” said Sheriff Blaisdell, “but it rained.” As it had done on
both Saturday and Sunday evenings, the temperature again fell well
below freezing by nightfall on Monday. The frozen ground, if Amy was
still out there and alive, would again mean that there would be no
tracks to follow on Tuesday.
“My honest opinion is that she’s still out there and she’s in the
elements,” said Skamania County Sheriff’s Deputy Tracy Wyckoff. “The
chances of her being alive are not in her favor. She just wasn’t dressed
for it.”
At every opportunity, the sheriff’s deputies questioned Amy’s friends
and acquaintances. Unfortunately, nobody could report having seen the
girl. Sheriff Blaisdell again looked at the possibility that Amy had
run away from home after all, but upon questioning several other
persons, he concluded, as he had believed initially, that she had not.
The sheriff told reporters that Amy’s family and friends did not
believe Amy would have run away, especially without taking any of her
personal belongings.
“I’m still hoping that’s what she did,” said Blaisdell, “but it doesn’t look like that now. Somebody would have told us by now.”
No breaks cropped up in the mystery surrounding Amy Dexter’s
disappearance until after the investigators interviewed her family
again, hoping in vain to uncover something of significance. One of Amy’s
female relatives recalled that Amy had said, just before leaving on
Saturday night, that she intended to be home by 10:00 p.m. to meet her
boyfriend. But Amy clearly never returned home, and her boyfriend said
that he had not seen her as planned.
So where had Amy gone? And with whom had she left? The probers
pondered these questions, but their theories and suppositions took them
nowhere.
Finally, however, the name Christopher L. Bradley surfaced during the
ongoing interviews, providing a glimmer of hope in the investigation.
The 18-year-old Bradley, the sheriff’s detectives learned, was a recent
graduate of Stevenson High School. He had known Amy and also had a
crush on her, said witnesses, and he had been trying in vain to get Amy
to go out with him. She’d finally consented to see him, one witness
told probers, but only to let him know that he really didn’t stand a
chance with her.
According to what the sheriff’s deputies were to able to learn, Amy
apparently told someone she was close to that she was going for a short
drive with Bradley on Saturday night to tell him that she already had a
boyfriend.
On Monday evening, after the day’s search efforts were done, deputies
interviewed Chris Bradley, who was a forest products worker with a job
at a sawmill in the nearby town of Cascade Locks. Bradley promptly
told them that he had in fact seen Amy on Saturday night. They had gone
for a drive, he said, just as the deputies had been told, and wound up
on a dirt logging road that runs through heavy timber and hilly
terrain. There, his pickup became mired in mud.

The spot was about three miles from Amy’s house, Bradley said, and
at approximately midnight, after they failed to get his truck out of
the mud, Amy decided that she would hike home. Bradley said he did
likewise and got home about half past three on Sunday, morning. He
hadn’t seen Amy since, and he had been unaware that she had, not
returned home until he was questioned by sheriff’s deputies. Realizing
that he was fast becoming the focal point of the sheriff’s
missing-person probe, Bradley readily agreed to take a lie-detector
test.
That same evening, he passed a two-and-a-half-hour polygraph examination.
“The information that we have right now is the same that we had
before,” said Sheriff Blaisdell following the young man’s polygraph
exam. Blaisdell had a missing girl who had disappeared without a trace
under suspicious circumstances, and a possible suspect who had easily
passed a lie-detector exam. Obviously frustrated, the lawmen added that
the polygraph had failed to contradict anything significant in
Bradley’s account. Sheriff Blaisdell, like Amy’s family and the
residents of Stevenson, just didn’t know what to make of it all.
Nothing added up.
Amy’s family insisted that she was familiar with the area where
Bradley’s truck had stalled and, since it had been a brightly moonlit
night, she should not have encountered any problems finding her way
home. Everyone estimated that Amy should have made it home within an
hour or two after leaving Bradley’s pickup.
“Nobody feels that she couldn’t have found her way home,” said
Sheriff Blaisdell, following two days of searching the rugged forest
area outside Stevenson. “All she had to do was go downhill.”
Shortly after sunrise on Tuesday, January 29th, searchers again began
looking for Amy in the area near where Bradley’s truck had become
stuck. They walked through brushy clear-cut areas and traversed steep
hillsides and gullies — any area where Amy might have wandered into. It
was rough going — so rough, in fact, that one searcher slipped on a
steep embankment and broke his kneecap and tore ligaments in his leg.
Still, there was no sign of the missing teenager.
“We haven’t found anything — nothing,” said Nancy Sourek at day’s end. “No one has found a thing today.”
On Wednesday, January 30th, the authorities brought in bloodhounds
and a team of divers from the Skamania County Sheriff’s Department. The
divers searched the deep areas of Rock Creek, which runs through a
steep canyon, but they still had no luck in finding any trace of Amy
Dexter.
At one point, the bloodhounds seemed to pick up Amy’s scent in the
area near where Bradley’s truck had become stuck. Nevertheless, the
searchers failed to turn up anything significant there. Similarly, the
dogs showed some interest in an area west of Stevenson, where some
people had reported that they might have seen Amy around midnight on the
night she disappeared. However, the dogs quickly lost whatever scent
they seemed to have picked up.
When all was said and done, the bloodhounds and their handlers came
up empty-handed, as did the sheriff’s mounted posse. There was simply no
sign of the girl. Following the fourth day of rigorous searching of
Skamania County’s backwoods, the search was called off, pending any new
developments.
“It’s over,” Deputy Bob Warrick said reluctantly. “We’ve done everything that’s been asked of us.”
“If there is any new information,” added Nancy Sourek, “we will bring
out a dog team, perhaps tomorrow. But at present, everything is
suspended.”
Although the sheriff’s department had called off the search, several
employees of a local logging company obtained the sheriff’s permission
to press on with their own search effort. They began early the next
morning, near the areas that had been previously searched.
A few hours later, at 10:20 a.m., the search for Amy Dexter was over.
One of the loggers discovered a disturbed area at the bottom of an
embankment, approximately 300 yards from Rock Creek, not far from a
driveway leading to a nearby house. When he went to investigate, he saw
what looked like a piece of clothing, partially buried. When he looked
closer, he realized that the disturbed area was a shallow, rain-soaked
makeshift grave that contained a partially exposed human body.

When Sheriff Blaisdell arrived at the remote site, accompanied by
Skamania County Prosecutor Robert Leick, he was satisfied that they had
found Amy Dexter’s body. The sheriff and the prosecutor observed that
whoever dug the grave had used some kind of a tool, likely a shovel,
and after depositing the body had hastily covered it with leaves and
brush in an attempt to conceal the disturbed earth.
“If they hadn’t walked right over it, they wouldn’t have seen it,” said Prosecutor Leick. “It was not an obvious grave.”
Under the direction of the sheriff and the prosecutor, deputies
cordoned off the scene and awaited the arrival of the Washington State
Crime Lab. When the technicians arrived, the scene was processed in the
usual manner, which took much of the afternoon. Afterward, the body was
removed and positively identified as Amy Dexter. Prosecutor Leick, who
also serves as the county coroner, promptly examined the remains. He
said that the corpse appeared scratched and bruised, but he couldn’t
immediately determine how Amy had died. Her body was sent to Portland,
where a pathologist would carry out the autopsy at the Multnomah County
Medical Examiner’s Office. The gravesite, it was sadly noted, was only
four-tenths of a mile from Amy’s home.
At a hastily-called news conference to announce the discovery of Amy
Dexter’s body, Sheriff Blaisdell and Prosecutor Leick emphasized that
no arrests had been made. The sheriff and prosecutor told reporters
that they were looking at several “people of interest,” and that Chris
Bradley was “one of the people we are talking to.” Though the lawmen
did have potential suspects to focus on, Leick urged parents in the
area to remain aware of “where their children are until we get this
thing wrapped up.
“I don’t mean to panic the community,” Leick stressed, “but there is
someone out here capable of killing a fifteen-year-old girl…Amy’s
death was more likely a crime of opportunity…she might have been on the
road alone and presented an opportunity for someone predisposed to do
this.”
The next day, following the autopsy in Portland, it was announced
that Amy Dexter had died from a stab wound to her throat that had
severed her jugular vein. She had also been raped.
Amy Dexter’s murder shook the communities of the Columbia River
Gorge, but particularly devastated the citizens of Stevenson, a town of
approximately 8,000 people. Amy, who had lived her entire life there,
was well-known and liked by kids and adults alike. Tension ran high in
Stevenson, and the town- folks’ bleak mood was readily apparent,
deepened by the flag at Stevenson High School, which flew at half-mast,
and the school’s marquee, which announced Amy’s funeral services to
everyone who drove down the town’s main street.
“When I hear the name Amy Dexter, I will remember joy,” wrote one of
Amy’s friends and schoolmates in a tribute to the slain sophomore.
“She was the kind of girl that you would think was totally
invincible,” wrote another friend. Out of respect and friendship, the
student body of Stevenson High School prepared a large, handmade
sympathy card for Amy’s family.
A surprise announcement on Friday, February 1st, revealed that
Christopher L. Bradley had been taken into custody in connection with
Amy’s murder. According to sources close to the case, he was picked up
by sheriff’s deputies the night before and taken to the sheriff’s
headquarters for questioning. Although officials weren’t saying much at
that point, an affidavit filed in Skamania County Superior Court by the
prosecutor’s office indicated that Bradley had confessed Amy’s rape
and murder to deputies.
According to the affidavit, Bradley, in a lengthy tape-recorded
statement, told the sheriff’s deputies how he had picked up Amy and had
driven her to the logging road just outside Stevenson. He described in
detail how his four-wheel- drive pickup
became stuck in the mud and stalled, and how he and Amy left the
vehicle and set out for home on foot. He planned to walk Amy to her
home, Bradley said, but along the way he was struck by a “sudden
impulse” and dragged the girl into the woods to rape her.
“She never screamed, not once,” during the rape, he said. When asked
if Amy had been scared, he replied, “She had to have been…She said,
‘You’ll never get away with this.’ I know she said that.”
Following the rape, Bradley said, “I just got to thinking, ‘What am I
going to do now?’ So I killed her. I took a knife and I cut her
throat, basically…
“She just kind of let out a breath of air and relaxed,” Bradley said
in describing how he severed Amy’s jugular vein with his pocketknife.
Bradley described how he struggled with his emotions in an attempt to
understand what came over him to cause him to rape and kill another
human being. He likened it to hunting, and the thrill associated with
stalking prey.
“It’s just the thrill of the hunt…I think it’s got something to do
with the thrill…it’s one of the biggest thrills I know, to go out and
just stalk something and get right up to it.”
A deputy asked him, did he feel that way about Amy?
“I almost did,” Bradley responded.
Bradley provided the investigators with an accurate description of
the clothing Amy wore on that fateful Saturday night, as well as where
he buried her and the position of her body after he’d placed her in the
shallow grave.
After the slaying, Bradley continued, he walked to his home, got a
shovel, returned to the slaying site, and buried Amy’s body. He
described the location where deputies could find the shovel, and told
them that he disposed of his pocketknife in a stand of bushes near
Stevenson High School.
Amy’s family insisted that she was familiar with the area where
Bradley’s truck had stalled and, since it had been a brightly moonlit
night, she should not have encountered any problems finding her way
home. Everyone estimated that Amy should have made it home within an
hour or two after leaving Bradley’s pickup.
“Nobody feels that she couldn’t have found her way home,” said
Sheriff Blaisdell, following two days of searching the rugged forest
area outside Stevenson. “All she had to do was go downhill.”
Shortly after sunrise on Tuesday, January 29th, searchers again began
looking for Amy in the area near where Bradley’s truck had become
stuck. They walked through brushy clear-cut areas and traversed steep
hillsides and gullies — any area where Amy might have wandered into. It
was rough going — so rough, in fact, that one searcher slipped on a
steep embankment and broke his kneecap and tore ligaments in his leg.
Still, there was no sign of the missing teenager.
“We haven’t found anything — nothing,” said Nancy Sourek at day’s end. “No one has found a thing today.”
On Wednesday, January 30th, the authorities brought in bloodhounds
and a team of divers from the Skamania County Sheriff’s Department. The
divers searched the deep areas of Rock Creek, which runs through a
steep canyon, but they still had no luck in finding any trace of Amy
Dexter.
At one point, the bloodhounds seemed to pick up Amy’s scent in the
area near where Bradley’s truck had become stuck. Nevertheless, the
searchers failed to turn up anything significant there. Similarly, the
dogs showed some interest in an area west of Stevenson, where some
people had reported that they might have seen Amy around midnight on the
night she disappeared. However, the dogs quickly lost whatever scent
they seemed to have picked up.
When all was said and done, the bloodhounds and their handlers came
up empty-handed, as did the sheriff’s mounted posse. There was simply no
sign of the girl. Following the fourth day of rigorous searching of
Skamania County’s backwoods, the search was called off, pending any new
developments.
“It’s over,” Deputy Bob Warrick said reluctantly. “We’ve done everything that’s been asked of us.”
“If there is any new information,” added Nancy Sourek, “we will bring
out a dog team, perhaps tomorrow. But at present, everything is
suspended.”

Although the sheriff’s department had called off the search, several
employees of a local logging company obtained the sheriff’s permission
to press on with their own search effort. They began early the next
morning, near the areas that had been previously searched.
A few hours later, at 10:20 a.m., the search for Amy Dexter was over.
One of the loggers discovered a disturbed area at the bottom of an
embankment, approximately 300 yards from Rock Creek, not far from a
driveway leading to a nearby house. When he went to investigate, he saw
what looked like a piece of clothing, partially buried. When he looked
closer, he realized that the disturbed area was a shallow, rain-soaked
makeshift grave that contained a partially exposed human body.
When Sheriff Blaisdell arrived at the remote site, accompanied by
Skamania County Prosecutor Robert Leick, he was satisfied that they had
found Amy Dexter’s body. The sheriff and the prosecutor observed that
whoever dug the grave had used some kind of a tool, likely a shovel, and
after depositing the body had hastily covered it with leaves and brush
in an attempt to conceal the disturbed earth.
“If they hadn’t walked right over it, they wouldn’t have seen it,” said Prosecutor Leick. “It was not an obvious grave.”
Under the direction of the sheriff and the prosecutor, deputies
cordoned off the scene and awaited the arrival of the Washington State
Crime Lab. When the technicians arrived, the scene was processed in the
usual manner, which took much of the afternoon. Afterward, the body was
removed and positively identified as Amy Dexter. Prosecutor Leick, who
also serves as the county coroner, promptly examined the remains. He
said that the corpse appeared scratched and bruised, but he couldn’t
immediately determine how Amy had died. Her body was sent to Portland,
where a pathologist would carry out the autopsy at the Multnomah County
Medical Examiner’s Office. The gravesite, it was sadly noted, was only
four-tenths of a mile from Amy’s home.
At a hastily-called news conference to announce the discovery of Amy
Dexter’s body, Sheriff Blaisdell and Prosecutor Leick emphasized that
no arrests had been made. The sheriff and prosecutor told reporters
that they were looking at several “people of interest,” and that Chris
Bradley was “one of the people we are talking to.” Though the lawmen
did have potential suspects to focus on, Leick urged parents in the
area to remain aware of “where their children are until we get this
thing wrapped up.
“I don’t mean to panic the community,” Leick stressed, “but there is
someone out here capable of killing a fifteen-year-old girl…Amy’s
death was more likely a crime of opportunity…she might have been on the
road alone and presented an opportunity for someone predisposed to do
this.”
The next day, following the autopsy in Portland, it was announced
that Amy Dexter had died from a stab wound to her throat that had
severed her jugular vein. She had also been raped.
Amy Dexter’s murder shook the communities of the Columbia River
Gorge, but particularly devastated the citizens of Stevenson, a town of
approximately 8,000 people. Amy, who had lived her entire life there,
was well-known and liked by kids and adults alike. Tension ran high in
Stevenson, and the town- folks’ bleak mood was readily apparent,
deepened by the flag at Stevenson High School, which flew at half-mast,
and the school’s marquee, which announced Amy’s funeral services to
everyone who drove down the town’s main street.
“When I hear the name Amy Dexter, I will remember joy,” wrote one of
Amy’s friends and schoolmates in a tribute to the slain sophomore.
“She was the kind of girl that you would think was totally
invincible,” wrote another friend. Out of respect and friendship, the
student body of Stevenson High School prepared a large, handmade
sympathy card for Amy’s family.
A surprise announcement on Friday, February 1st, revealed that
Christopher L. Bradley had been taken into custody in connection with
Amy’s murder. According to sources close to the case, he was picked up
by sheriff’s deputies the night before and taken to the sheriff’s
headquarters for questioning. Although officials weren’t saying much at
that point, an affidavit filed in Skamania County Superior Court by the
prosecutor’s office indicated that Bradley had confessed Amy’s rape
and murder to deputies.

According to the affidavit, Bradley, in a lengthy tape-recorded
statement, told the sheriff’s deputies how he had picked up Amy and had
driven her to the logging road just outside Stevenson. He described in
detail how his four-wheel- drive pickup
became stuck in the mud and stalled, and how he and Amy left the
vehicle and set out for home on foot. He planned to walk Amy to her
home, Bradley said, but along the way he was struck by a “sudden
impulse” and dragged the girl into the woods to rape her.
“She never screamed, not once,” during the rape, he said. When asked
if Amy had been scared, he replied, “She had to have been…She said,
‘You’ll never get away with this.’ I know she said that.”
Following the rape, Bradley said, “I just got to thinking, ‘What am I
going to do now?’ So I killed her. I took a knife and I cut her
throat, basically…
“She just kind of let out a breath of air and relaxed,” Bradley said
in describing how he severed Amy’s jugular vein with his pocketknife.
Bradley described how he struggled with his emotions in an attempt to
understand what came over him to cause him to rape and kill another
human being. He likened it to hunting, and the thrill associated with
stalking prey.
“It’s just the thrill of the hunt…I think it’s got something to do
with the thrill…it’s one of the biggest thrills I know, to go out and
just stalk something and get right up to it.”
A deputy asked him, did he feel that way about Amy?
“I almost did,” Bradley responded.
Bradley provided the investigators with an accurate description of
the clothing Amy wore on that fateful Saturday night, as well as where
he buried her and the position of her body after he’d placed her in the
shallow grave.
After the slaying, Bradley continued, he walked to his home, got a
shovel, returned to the slaying site, and buried Amy’s body. He
described the location where deputies could find the shovel, and told
them that he disposed of his pocketknife in a stand of bushes near
Stevenson High School.
Amy’s family insisted that she was familiar with the area where
Bradley’s truck had stalled and, since it had been a brightly moonlit
night, she should not have encountered any problems finding her way
home. Everyone estimated that Amy should have made it home within an
hour or two after leaving Bradley’s pickup.
“Nobody feels that she couldn’t have found her way home,” said
Sheriff Blaisdell, following two days of searching the rugged forest
area outside Stevenson. “All she had to do was go downhill.”
Shortly after sunrise on Tuesday, January 29th, searchers again began
looking for Amy in the area near where Bradley’s truck had become
stuck. They walked through brushy clear-cut areas and traversed steep
hillsides and gullies — any area where Amy might have wandered into. It
was rough going — so rough, in fact, that one searcher slipped on a
steep embankment and broke his kneecap and tore ligaments in his leg.
Still, there was no sign of the missing teenager.
“We haven’t found anything — nothing,” said Nancy Sourek at day’s end. “No one has found a thing today.”
On Wednesday, January 30th, the authorities brought in bloodhounds
and a team of divers from the Skamania County Sheriff’s Department. The
divers searched the deep areas of Rock Creek, which runs through a
steep canyon, but they still had no luck in finding any trace of Amy
Dexter.
At one point, the bloodhounds seemed to pick up Amy’s scent in the
area near where Bradley’s truck had become stuck. Nevertheless, the
searchers failed to turn up anything significant there. Similarly, the
dogs showed some interest in an area west of Stevenson, where some
people had reported that they might have seen Amy around midnight on the
night she disappeared. However, the dogs quickly lost whatever scent
they seemed to have picked up.
When all was said and done, the bloodhounds and their handlers came
up empty-handed, as did the sheriff’s mounted posse. There was simply no
sign of the girl. Following the fourth day of rigorous searching of
Skamania County’s backwoods, the search was called off, pending any new
developments.
“It’s over,” Deputy Bob Warrick said reluctantly. “We’ve done everything that’s been asked of us.”
“If there is any new information,” added Nancy Sourek, “we will bring
out a dog team, perhaps tomorrow. But at present, everything is
suspended.”

Although the sheriff’s department had called off the search, several
employees of a local logging company obtained the sheriff’s permission
to press on with their own search effort. They began early the next
morning, near the areas that had been previously searched.
A few hours later, at 10:20 a.m., the search for Amy Dexter was over.
One of the loggers discovered a disturbed area at the bottom of an
embankment, approximately 300 yards from Rock Creek, not far from a
driveway leading to a nearby house. When he went to investigate, he saw
what looked like a piece of clothing, partially buried. When he looked
closer, he realized that the disturbed area was a shallow, rain-soaked
makeshift grave that contained a partially exposed human body.
When Sheriff Blaisdell arrived at the remote site, accompanied by
Skamania County Prosecutor Robert Leick, he was satisfied that they had
found Amy Dexter’s body. The sheriff and the prosecutor observed that
whoever dug the grave had used some kind of a tool, likely a shovel, and
after depositing the body had hastily covered it with leaves and brush
in an attempt to conceal the disturbed earth.
“If they hadn’t walked right over it, they wouldn’t have seen it,” said Prosecutor Leick. “It was not an obvious grave.”
Under the direction of the sheriff and the prosecutor, deputies
cordoned off the scene and awaited the arrival of the Washington State
Crime Lab. When the technicians arrived, the scene was processed in the
usual manner, which took much of the afternoon. Afterward, the body was
removed and positively identified as Amy Dexter. Prosecutor Leick, who
also serves as the county coroner, promptly examined the remains. He
said that the corpse appeared scratched and bruised, but he couldn’t
immediately determine how Amy had died. Her body was sent to Portland,
where a pathologist would carry out the autopsy at the Multnomah County
Medical Examiner’s Office. The gravesite, it was sadly noted, was only
four-tenths of a mile from Amy’s home.
At a hastily-called news conference to announce the discovery of Amy
Dexter’s body, Sheriff Blaisdell and Prosecutor Leick emphasized that
no arrests had been made. The sheriff and prosecutor told reporters
that they were looking at several “people of interest,” and that Chris
Bradley was “one of the people we are talking to.” Though the lawmen
did have potential suspects to focus on, Leick urged parents in the
area to remain aware of “where their children are until we get this
thing wrapped up.
“I don’t mean to panic the community,” Leick stressed, “but there is
someone out here capable of killing a fifteen-year-old girl…Amy’s
death was more likely a crime of opportunity…she might have been on the
road alone and presented an opportunity for someone predisposed to do
this.”
The next day, following the autopsy in Portland, it was announced
that Amy Dexter had died from a stab wound to her throat that had
severed her jugular vein. She had also been raped.
Amy Dexter’s murder shook the communities of the Columbia River
Gorge, but particularly devastated the citizens of Stevenson, a town of
approximately 8,000 people. Amy, who had lived her entire life there,
was well-known and liked by kids and adults alike. Tension ran high in
Stevenson, and the town- folks’ bleak mood was readily apparent,
deepened by the flag at Stevenson High School, which flew at half-mast,
and the school’s marquee, which announced Amy’s funeral services to
everyone who drove down the town’s main street.
“When I hear the name Amy Dexter, I will remember joy,” wrote one of
Amy’s friends and schoolmates in a tribute to the slain sophomore.
“She was the kind of girl that you would think was totally
invincible,” wrote another friend. Out of respect and friendship, the
student body of Stevenson High School prepared a large, handmade
sympathy card for Amy’s family.
A surprise announcement on Friday, February 1st, revealed that
Christopher L. Bradley had been taken into custody in connection with
Amy’s murder. According to sources close to the case, he was picked up
by sheriff’s deputies the night before and taken to the sheriff’s
headquarters for questioning. Although officials weren’t saying much at
that point, an affidavit filed in Skamania County Superior Court by the
prosecutor’s office indicated that Bradley had confessed Amy’s rape
and murder to deputies.
According to the affidavit, Bradley, in a lengthy tape-recorded
statement, told the sheriff’s deputies how he had picked up Amy and had
driven her to the logging road just outside Stevenson. He described in
detail how his four-wheel- drive pickup
became stuck in the mud and stalled, and how he and Amy left the
vehicle and set out for home on foot. He planned to walk Amy to her
home, Bradley said, but along the way he was struck by a “sudden
impulse” and dragged the girl into the woods to rape her.
“She never screamed, not once,” during the rape, he said. When asked
if Amy had been scared, he replied, “She had to have been…She said,
‘You’ll never get away with this.’ I know she said that.”
Following the rape, Bradley said, “I just got to thinking, ‘What am I
going to do now?’ So I killed her. I took a knife and I cut her
throat, basically…
“She just kind of let out a breath of air and relaxed,” Bradley said
in describing how he severed Amy’s jugular vein with his pocketknife.
Bradley described how he struggled with his emotions in an attempt to
understand what came over him to cause him to rape and kill another
human being. He likened it to hunting, and the thrill associated with
stalking prey.
“It’s just the thrill of the hunt…I think it’s got something to do
with the thrill…it’s one of the biggest thrills I know, to go out and
just stalk something and get right up to it.”
A deputy asked him, did he feel that way about Amy?
“I almost did,” Bradley responded.
Bradley provided the investigators with an accurate description of
the clothing Amy wore on that fateful Saturday night, as well as where
he buried her and the position of her body after he’d placed her in the
shallow grave.
After the slaying, Bradley continued, he walked to his home, got a
shovel, returned to the slaying site, and buried Amy’s body. He
described the location where deputies could find the shovel, and told
them that he disposed of his pocketknife in a stand of bushes near
Stevenson High School.